Greetings. G. Fried here.
I'd like to respond to Paul Reilly's excellent posting on sorcery. I will
confess that I am so uncomfortable with the RQ III sorcery system that I
simply ignore it, so I will restrict my thoughts to broad conceptual issues
and hope that proves useful too.
My sense is that most of us fell in love with RQ because, unlike games like
D&D, the myths and the system gave real texture to characters and to the
cultic magic those characters wield. SOmehow, RQ III stumbled and produced a
sorcery system that seems more like an outgrowth of a game system. How do we
fix this, given that -- as Paul points out -- Avalon Hill cannot be expected
just to scrap the campaigns it has published? One possible answer, very
broadly sketched: Develop a sorcery system, as many have suggested, based
much more closely upon the runes themselves, using runes as 'nouns' and
'verbs' in magical sentences. This would be the fundamental sorcery system.
But here's the clincher: not all (or many, or even any -- since Time began)
sorcerers have complete knowedge of this true sorcery. Then, the sorcery
system outlined in RQ III could stand as one of many schools of partial, or
fallen sorcery. THis would permit what so much of us love in RQ: the
development of many different kinds of sorcery (on the analogy with the even
more numerous cults) given different histories.
Without going into specifics too much, what I'd like to see in a rune sorcery
system is a much larger array of spells which would be thought of as 'proven'
rune 'sentences'. In addition sorcerers should be able to wing it by
inventing their own senstences, even on the spot, with some system to
calculate how hard this is. RQ is largely about interpretation: cultists
agonizing about how to best emulate their god, and even reforging the meaning
of gods on the hero plane (qv the discussions about Humakt in the Digest
recently!). Sorcerers should be engaged in pushing the limits of the meaning
of the runes themselves. Sure, the Death rune means death, but it also means
severing, separation, pain, hate etc. Different gods appropriate different
interpretative aspects of the same rune; Humakt reads Truth as honor, Lhankor
Mhy reads it as knowledge. Sorcerers manipulate the nuance of meaning in the
runes in devising their spell 'sentences'. (By the way, in English, we call
them magic 'spells' because it was once thought that anyone who had power
over the art of writing, the representation of reality, could 'spell' you!)
If we can devise a sytem whereby we give each rune its obvious,
not-so-obvious, and really-reaching-for-it interpretations, then we might
devise a way to calculate how hard it would be to put together certain spell
sentences. The current sorcery system just represents a small selection of
successful sentences.
As far as the present sorcery mechanics go, it seems to me too many of the
spells relate to game mechanics. Something is wrong when you've got guys
like in Griffin Mountain with 20 HP in in a location, 20 AP and 20 damage
boosting! This ruins the feel of the game.
Also, why are all spells just as easy as each other to learn? They should be
more or less difficult depending on the interpretative weirdness of their
runic 'spelling, perhaps on the sorcerer's level of mastery with the runes
concerned. Perhaps different schools 'tie' the magician closer with certain
runes, making learning and casting certain spells easier. Instead of having
a % score in each spell, have a skill in spell-casting alone, with plus and
minus given for the difficulty of the spell, its range and intensity, etc.
OK. Enough. These are just ideas. A wish list for the FLAVOR of sorcery
I'd like to see. Those of you working on the mechanics, do with it as you
will, and good luck!
-- G. Fried
(Message rqd:92)
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